Yachtsman

The Ventura Yacht Club will conduct a memorial service and burial at sea Wednesday for prominent longtime yachtsman and harbor business owner Larry Dudley, 80, who died Aug. 24. Dudley spent three decades sailing competitively and was the first mate on Humphrey Bogart's sailboat, Santana, in the 1950s. The service is scheduled for 2 p.m., with a reception to follow at the yacht club, 1755 Spinnaker Drive.

Coast Guard planes Monday searched waters northeast of Bermuda for signs of veteran yachtsman Mike Plant, who was more than two weeks overdue in France on a solo Atlantic crossing. Planes operating out of Bermuda concentrated on an area about 600 miles northeast of the island. The search began Friday. Plant, 41, set out Oct. 16 from New York to Les Sables d'Olonne in France for the start of an around-the-world race. He was in a 60-foot sloop called Coyote.

A British yachtsman whose boat overturned during a storm recounted his ordeal from aboard the Australian warship that rescued him from icy Antarctic seas. Tony Bullimore, 56, was competing in a round-the-world yacht race when the keel of his boat cracked during a storm. "It just went snap, and within seconds--literally within a few seconds--the boat was sitting upside down with me sitting inside the boat, sitting and standing and sliding around on the roof with water slowly seeping in," he said.

Owen Churchill, 89, one of the Southland's most revered yachtsmen and the oldest surviving Olympic gold medalist, died Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles. Churchill was an honorary member of virtually every yacht club on the West Coast and an active member of the California, Los Angeles, St. Francis and Catalina Island clubs, and the Yacht Club de France. Churchill sailed in the 1928 Olympics on the Zuider Zee in Holland but did not win a medal.

Frank Simpson III, 67, a lawyer and a charter director of the Los Angeles-St. Petersburg, Russia, Sister Cities Committee. A third-generation Californian, he attended the U.S. Naval Academy and USC Law School, and spent his legal career with the firm Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton.

A Japanese yachtsman landed Friday in the southern port city of Pusan after three months drifting at sea, the Yonhap news agency reported. Moroi Kiyoji, 56, was on a solo journey across the Pacific from Japan to Los Angeles when his mast broke in rough seas near Hawaii on March 8. He was rescued by the 17,161-foot freighter Vienna Wood last week.

George Tooby, a world-class yachtsman who sailed for the Newport Harbor Yacht Club, has died at a Pasadena convalescent home. He was 76. He died Tuesday of natural causes, according to a spokesman for Cabot and Sons mortuary in Pasadena. Services are scheduled for 2 p.m. today at All Saints Episcopal Church, 132 N. Euclid Ave., Pasadena. Tooby, who also held memberships in the St.

He was an architect who sailed. He was a sailor who planned mammoth commercial projects such as Los Angeles' Vermont-Wilshire subway station. In 1984, he melded the vocation with the avocation to help guide the yachting events for the Los Angeles Olympic Games. Charles McChesney "Chuck" Kober, who raced or coached in yachting regattas at five Olympics, died Oct. 22 at a Bangor, Maine, marina called Journey's End. His family said he was preparing for a cruise aboard his J-40, the Shibui.

The grueling sea odyssey of Newport Beach yachtsman Scott McClung ended Friday when a federal judge freed the ailing mariner, five weeks after he was arrested for having guns aboard his vessel. Looking drawn, McClung, 36, embraced his father, girlfriend and attorney after he was informed that Judge Alfredo Torres--who deliberated 28 hours over three days--had dropped weapons charges that could have meant a five- to 30-year prison sentence.